Author Archives: Jonathan

Susan Elizabeth Phillips tells us what she is reading

Written by Jonathan. Posted on December 23, 2011. Filed under #WhoReadsWho, Peroozal viewpoint. No comments.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips spoke with us at the 2011 RWA convention in NY and shared some thoughts about her writing and the book she is currently reading.

You can read more of Susan’s recommendations on her Peroozal author page.

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Steve Martini interviewed at Thriller Fest 2011

Written by Jonathan. Posted on December 11, 2011. Filed under #WhoReadsWho, Peroozal viewpoint. No comments.

Steve Martini, author of numerous bestselling thriller novels, discusses his books and why ‘The Day of the Jackal’ inspired his early writing.

You can see more of Steve’s recommendations on his Peroozal author page

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Eloisa James interview at RWA 2011

Written by Jonathan. Posted on December 11, 2011. Filed under #WhoReadsWho, Peroozal viewpoint. No comments.

Eloisa James took a few minutes out of her signing duties at the Romance Writers Association annual confab in New York earlier in the year. We asked her about her writing and the books she is currently reading.

You can see more of Eloisa’s recommendations on her Peroozal author page here:

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Should authors care about Google+ ?

Written by Jonathan. Posted on July 15, 2011. Filed under Peroozal viewpoint, Social Networking. Tagged , , . 60 Comments.

That’s just great. We are all just getting our heads around the fact that Facebook is the new web, that twitter is a hugely important tool for building our brand… and along comes Google +. Yet another place to suck up our time and draw attention away from the real work of writing, or selling or whatever it is we do.

At first it seemed like this would be just another failed attempt by Google to gain ground on its social competitors, a place where it has consistently missed the mark. But something is clicking with this one and while its too early to tell for sure, every indication is that Google + is going to establish enough momentum to demand our attention.

What does this mean for authors and the world of books? Well for authors if you want to connect with readers, like it or not, you have to be where they are. If G+ has 10million members after what is less than a few weeks, then its a place where at least a few of your current or potential readers are hanging out.  The full feature set isn’t apparent yet but its likely to mirror many of the things you see on facebook and elsewhere and maybe do them better. Private and public chat rooms, sharing of excerpts, notification of tours, all of those things are either possible now or will be soon. Right now you can’t create a page that is a dedicated business or fan page but word is that is coming in the coming months. So my guess is that its worth the time to sign up and start building a network, maybe you’ll be a pioneer of the next big thing. And for a small investment of time that seems like a decent trade off at this point.

I just started to build my network up on G+ and so far its a positive experience. There’s no immediate pay off that makes it feel substantially different from Facebook, but its a clean and powerful interface and the privacy controls are really well set up.

I’ll be posting a series of video interviews from RWA and ThrillerFEst  over the coming weeks – in editing now, very exciting- and I’ll use G+ as well as Facebook to share them. Come find me and let me know what you think.

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Romance writers galore!

Written by Jonathan. Posted on June 29, 2011. Filed under Peroozal viewpoint. 56 Comments.

We had an amazing evening last night at the RWA Literacy signing event in Times Square. We met hundreds of wonderful authors. Thanks to Erin and the RWA for letting us attend.

Best of all, we interviewed dozens of authors on camera telling us all about their favorite books. We’ll start posting the clips RWA logoas soon as we can get them edited. Stay tuned, some great stuff coming your way.

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How to get the most out of Facebook.

Written by Jonathan. Posted on October 19, 2010. Filed under Author news, Social Networking. Tagged , . No comments.

Lots of authors are out there using Facebook to engage their fans. It’s a powerful tool that is only getting more powerful with every passing month. In our brief review of author facebook presence we see a wide range of activity. Many authors have multiple facebook pages – their personal page, a fan page and often a community page they don’t actually control. The average number of friends, fans and community page followers is around 5,000 for bestselling and midlist authors. And that’s excluding some of the hugely powerful social networkers like Stephen King who with a million plus followers are in a league of their own.


But here’s the rub, having more followers isn’t necessarily the only path to social network success. The more people who are on facebook in general and the more fans you have , the more the signal starts to become just noise. How do you know if anyone actually gets to see your post before its gets pushed down the timeline into obscurity? Well facebook anticipated some of that and have left little to chance. Just like the google pagerank algorithms that dominated search marketing, facebook has its own algorithms in place that manage what gets seen and who sees it.

Thomas Webber’s recent article on the Daily Beast does a great job analyzing the various components of the algorithm and explaining how you can make the most out of the system.

Some of the highlighted tips include:

- Post content that stimulates comments: ask questions or dare to be provocative
- Use links as often as you can: when you comment on reviews for your books make sure you are linking out to them
- Include images and video as often as you can: taken any pictures on your book tours lately?

Take a look through the entire piece, its well worth the effort to help you on your way to mastering Facebook and maximizing the chances your content will be seen.

Oh and while you are at it, make sure to check out the peroozal Facebook page and, yes you guessed it,  leave a comment.

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Welcome to the Peroozal blog

Written by Jonathan. Posted on September 26, 2010. Filed under News. No comments.

"Books glorious books....."

This week marks the launch of the Peroozal blog. Our vision is that the blog will be the perfect companion to the peroozal.com web site itself. As well as news about Peroozal itself, we’ll be featuring insights into the authors who make up our member network, commentary on the life of a start up in the world of publishing and discussion from the entire peroozal team.

let the blogging begin!

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